Sweet, Sneaky Things
by tildemarco
Summary: Lily has one (1) extremely vocal admirer and one (1) extremely secret admirer. She is deeply frustrated with James and his exaggerated pick up lines and constant excited yelling. But someone has been doing sneaky nice things for her, and she can't figure out who it could be.


"Merlin's hairy balls! Who reshelved this?" She muttered, one arm and her entire head shoved inside a musty cabinet, scrabbling to extricate a single volume from its disorganized heap.

"Fezziwig next to Tribald? They're not even close alphabetically, let alone in the Dewey Decimal System!" She sighed a spectacular sigh, thumping her forehead against the books in front of her, "I miss muggle libraries."

She resumed her search and her diatribe, "You didn't have to go digging around in cabinets better suited to a wine cellar to find the _one copy _of _the definitive work_ on Transfiguration in the fourteenth century which is _absolutely necessary for your thesis paper _that is _due next weeAAHK!"_

Despite the cabinet's cellar origins, it was located on top of a stack of older, seldom-used tomes (seldom-used, of course, because they were holding up the cabinet.) It required a ladder to rifle through it, and, to Lily Evans' misfortune, all the ladders in the library were mysteriously missing at the moment. So, she had taken her sturdy wooden chair from the study carrel and, with one foot propped against the back, had tipped the chair onto its hind legs. She performed the above monologue rooting through the cabinet, amidst this astonishing feat of balance, until one of the chair legs simply snapped.

She shrieked as she dropped, arse over teakettle, and crash landed on top of one James Fleamont Potter.

"Alright, Evans?" wheezed the sprawled lump of juvenile delinquent beneath her, grinning even as his lungs refused to expand. She'd landed on his solar plexus and knocked the wind right out of him. "I'm fine, thanks for asking," he spluttered on, "I'm used to not being able to breathe around you, so this really isn't anything new."

The mass of red hair, Gryffindor sweater, and sensible shoes groaned. "Yeah, I'm alright, unless you count my pride." She rolled off her erstwhile savior, blew her bangs roughly out of her face, and whipped out her wand. "_Accio Fleams and Flummery by Flimton Fillibut! _What are you doing here anyway, Potter? No mischief to get up to, no knavery to be about?"

The messy-haired boy finally managed to take a deep breath. "So little faith in me, Evans! I'll have you know, I was…" The summoned tome made a haphazard dash to Lily via the space occupied by

Potter's head. Unfortunately, he ducked. "Doing research?" he finished, his voice tipping up at the end and ruining a perfectly plausible lie.

Lily quirked an eyebrow in disbelief, and turned on her heel to hide an encroaching smile. As if Potter would ever do research. She returned to her study carrel, kidnapping a new chair for her purpose and tossing her discarded school robes over the back. She set down the Fillibut tome with a satisfying _whump_ on the ancient desk, and expertly flicked to the index at the back. When she had controlled her misbehaving facial muscles, she looked up from her conquest and sighed, "Just please don't set anything on fire. I have an essay to write."

His eyes lit up, her parting shot perhaps giving him ideas that she didn't want to think about. He sketched a stupid-looking bow, arms all a-gangle, and vanished. Amused bewilderment overtook Lily's brow and a chuckle finally escaped her, shaking her head at the spot Potter had once occupied. With some small effort, Lily deliberately pushed the messy-haired boy from her mind and returned to her textbook.

888

The absolute worst thing to wake up to is the thought that you have drooled on the only copy of the textbook that is supposed to save you from the harpy that is your Transfiguration professor.

Or maybe the worst thing is being drooled _on _while sleeping on the only copy of said Transfiguration textbook?

Lily's addled mind busied itself spinning increasingly unlikely scenarios that could potentially be worse than the one she was currently in, and subsequently forgot that she was, in fact, drooling on the only copy of that thrice-damned book.

She almost fell back asleep, curling into the warmth that surrounded her, but the page beneath her cheek crinkled and she shot up like it'd bit her. The motion made the robes draped across her shoulders slip down, taking their warmth with them. As her brain un-fuzzed, she managed to stick on the only truly relevant thought of the moment, which was, of course, _I wonder if there will be pie at dinner…_

A check of her watch provided the ringing disappointment that she had missed dinner entirely. Only half-seeing the world before her, she gathered her quills and notes. Had she really written thirty inches before falling asleep? She peered closer at the parchment and forced her eyes to focus. About ten inches down, the handwriting suddenly became jagged and sprawling, a stark contrast to her own concise print.

A little postscript at the bottom left corner left only more questions.

_Hope this helps! Though how it furthers your thesis, I have no idea. Try Whumpton next, she's got some good bits on the shift in fundamental transfiguration theory around this time period, and she's fairly to the point. This Fillibut bloke has an exaggerated sense of self-importance and an unfortunate tendency to dither. I would have fallen asleep too. Best of luck!_

Someone had finished her notes for her. Someone had finished her notes for her _and _covered her with her robe while she was sleeping. That was... that was...

Highly impractical. Whoever it was clearly should have woken her up. Then she wouldn't have missed dinner. Honestly, it really was quite rude of them.

Nevertheless, Lily shoved her last quill into her ponytail and went to find the recommended Whumpton text. Thin volume added to the unruly stack, she made her way back to the Gryffindor common room, juggling her school supplies on the moving staircase in order to get a hand free to hold on to the railing. Her stride swift and stormy, she delivered the password, "Widdershins!" at ten paces. The portrait swung open just as she arrived, and she slipped through the opening with a smooth, practiced motion.

Remus Lupin sat by the fireside with a book, probably _The Complete Works of William Shakespeare_. He'd been working on "Julius Caesar" the last time she'd asked. It wouldn't surprise her if he was planning a coup. Hell, depending on what Potter decided to say to her next, she might even help him. An interesting extracurricular possibility, that was.

The aforementioned Potter and his best-friend-turned-brother Sirius Black occupied the great window seat, heads bowed low over something hidden in their cupped palms. It was probably contraband, knowing them, but Lily had not actually seen any contraband and therefore was not obligated to confiscate it from them, in her role as Prefect. She was perfectly content to not speak to James Potter anymore today, and besides, she had business to attend to.

She crossed the common room in eight strides and was turning onto the girls' stairs when Potter called out, "Evans, you here to knock the wind out of me again?"

He just made it so easy. She couldn't help it.

"You could use it, Potter. Any more hot air in you and you'd be the Hindenburg."

She was up the stairs and out of sight when she heard it. "Remus, what's this hen-den-burg business? _Please_ let it be sexy."

She didn't even try to stop her eye roll. But she remembered her purpose and swung open the door to her dorm room.

Five poster beds draped in heavy crimson curtains and little golden lights in a string. A mirror ball levitated just below the ceiling, rotating on an invisible axis, reflecting lights from an unseen source. The floor was strewn with clothes and parchment and textbooks and dirty dishes. A bra lay discarded atop a velvet canopy.

One of the four posters' curtains were conspicuously closed.

"ROOM CHECK!" Lily boomed, allowing the door to clatter shut behind her.

Out from behind the closed velvet tumbled two girls, hair in wild disarray. The brunette, Dorcas, had the blonde, Marlene's, deep plum lipstick smeared across her mouth, down her neck, and on below her shirt's collar which she was frantically trying to rebutton. Marlene, untroubled by her untucked shirt and multiple forming hickies, saw their interruption first.

"LILY!" She crowed, "You said you wouldn't do that anymore! Dorcas, stop, it's only Lils."

"Wot?" The mussed brunette looked up but didn't stop buttoning. "Lily, you promised!"

"You deserved it! Next time you see me sleeping in a study carrel, bloody well wake me up!" She stalked to her own bed, threw down the bundle in her arms, and reached into the canvas bag she kept hanging there, drawing out a shiny green apple. "I missed dinner," she absolutely did not whine.

"What on Earth are you talking about?" Dorcas sighed. Buttons completed, she leaned absently into Marlene's chest.

Lily stopped mid-bite. "You mean you didn't cover me up with my cloak? Like, half an hour ago? In the Transfiguration section of the library, over by the windows?"

Dorcas was shaking her head, "Nope."

Lily blinked. "Marlene?"

The blonde twirled a lock of brunette hair in her fingers. "Half an hour ago? I was... otherwise occupied." Blue eyes caressed an ear, slipped down the curve of a throat, lost in salient memory.

"Stop, nope!" Lily dove headfirst into her pillow, and, consequently, the robes and school supplies she had abandoned there. "Don't tell me anything else! I don't want to know!" Her shouting was muffled through the mess.

"Still doesn't answer the question though," Dorcas mused.

Lily's head lifted again, flaming red hair stuck haphazardly to her face. "What?"

Marlene grinned, a slow, sultry smile that gave Lily the chilling impression the girl knew how the world would end. "Who is your secret admirer?"

888

It had been four days since The Incident and Lily Evans had put it out of her mind entirely. She had not been thinking about it at all, really, because it was probably just some nice person who saw that she was sleeping and thought she looked cold. And wrote twenty inches of notes on an esoteric and only mildly relevant Transfiguration book from the late Cretaceous period. _And _a lovely note recommending materials for further study. And then put that book back under her head again because that's how she'd fallen asleep. Which any good samaritan would do. Completely reasonable.

At this point it was beneath her notice.

Therefore, she was not sitting at the Gryffindor table scanning the Great Hall for... someone who would do... something nice for... someone else? Of course she wasn't. That would be ridiculous, since she was not thinking about it at all.

Her toast had gone cold in front of her, and her fork held a piece of pasty pie that she did not recall spearing. A surreptitious glance around her showed that if anyone had noticed her absentmindedness, they were at least polite enough not to draw attention to it. She took a deep breath and enjoyed a moment of appreciation for her choice of friends. But something had recalled her to the present moment, and it rang out again, like a door slamming just a little too close to your head.

"EVANS!"

Further down the long table, Potter and his cohort convened. Sirius reached over Remus' open book to steal a chicken leg off his plate. Peter Pettigrew, the runt in a litter of runts, was stealing Sirius' slice of pasty pie. Somehow, and Lily was sure he'd take the trick of it to his grave, Remus ended up with all of the chocolate buns from all of their plates, and never once took his eyes off the page in front of him. All three seemed perfectly content to soliloquize their woes, open mouths gnawing at their spoils. Potter, his own plate being pilfered as soon as he took his eyes off it, leaned back again to call down the table at her. Of course, he was grinning.

"Hey, Evans! What do you get when you cross a snowman with a vampire? _Frostbite!"_

That didn't even merit a response.

Lily groaned and dropped her head to the table, narrowly missing her cold buttered toast. Dorcas reached over her and rubbed her back in solidarity, while Marlene, ever the exhibitionist, stood up on her bench and shouted, "Potter, your desperation is showing!" and then proceeded to hurl insults and bits of toast down the table.

Lily was trying to figure out the spell to make this moment _not_ be happening when Dorcas made a surprised little sound at the back of her throat. Lily assumed that she'd been hit by a flying piece of toast, but the quiet girl gently tugged at Lily's hair. Taking this as a request for visual communication, Lily lifted her head from the table and immediately saw what had drawn Dorcas' attention.

Lily's goblet of pumpkin juice had sprouted a tiny plant. Its green head wriggled and stretched up towards the candlelit ceiling, leaves unfurling from the elongating stem faster and faster. When the bud had reached its full height, the suddenly white head twisted and burst open, revealing a glorious pink and white lily bloom.

Its red headed namesake stared, agog, for several minutes before she even thought to look around for who might have done it.

888

She was supposed to be studying. She'd skipped a Hogsmeade trip with Marlene and Dorcas for the express purpose of revising for the next year's upcoming NEWTs. She had claimed the great window seat in the Gryffindor common room all to herself. Her books and notes were stacked neatly in front of her, ready to remind her of things she probably already knew but wanted to be reminded of anyway. And despite all this, she sat, staring out the window over the Lake.

The Giant Squid had surfaced to bask in the warm upper water and was rolling and diving and playing, perfectly at home in its environment. Enormous tentacles splashed with each motion, glistening liquid black in the sunlight. It was a halcyon day, but Lily was all storm clouds.

Her mind was ticking away at the established list of people who could do the feat of magic she'd witnessed in the Great Hall the other day. It would take an incredible amount of clarity and focus, and a deep knowledge of herbology to literally _grow a lily _in a goblet of pumpkin juice. The list was nearly forty people long, but that wasn't the problem. The problem was that while she could name every person in the castle who _could _do this, she couldn't for the life of her figure out who _would._

Flowers were a traditionally romantic gift. Assuming this was intended as a romantic gesture, which it might not have been - was she being vain in assuming it was? Oh, Merlin, how conceited was she to even be thinking this right now? And literally no one had expressed any interest in dating her, no invitations to Hogsmeade or outings to the lake, no hand holding or even any excessive smiling.

Well, except Potter. Potter and his damned grin.

But Potter was more interested in slinging poorly thought-out one-liners at her retreating back than working complex magic to make something beautiful come to life in front of her. Also, he was, at his core, an attention-seeker, and if he had been behind either of the sweet, sneaky things that had happened to her, he would surely have stuck around to claim the credit. And besides, James Fleamont Potter did not have a single romantic bone in his body.

It had to be someone else. But who?

Who would take notes for her, give her research recommendations, make sure she was warm, make flowers bloom for her? A soft, hopeful smile blossomed in her memory. He was definitely the type to take notes for someone. He may even be shy enough to leave notes instead of talking to her in person. And he could definitely make the lily bloom, she'd seen his work in Charms lessons. But Remus Lupin had never shown any romantic interest in anyone, not that Lily had noticed...

Her brow creased and she leaned her head against the pillowed windowsill.

Her vision flooded with feathers and she rocketed back, then breathed a sigh of relief. The enormous tawny barn owl was _outside_ the glass, claws well occupied with a small brown paper-wrapped package. It pecked harshly at the window, demanding to be let in. Its eyes accused her of dallying, clearly a capital offence in its book.

She slipped the latch and swung the window out wide, letting the bird and the cool fall breeze inside. It landed atop her stack of textbooks and folded its wings, sticking out its leg with its beak high in the air. Sensing impatience, Lily hastily untied the little package and rummaged in her skirt pocket for the extra biscuit she'd snagged at breakfast that morning. Appeased with this offering, the great barn owl launched itself off the teetering stack of books and out the window, effortlessly catching the crosswind and disappearing, probably back to the owlery.

The package was unmarked. No note, no indication where it was from. Lily held it to her ear and shook, but all she heard was a faint rustling. She set it down in front of her and peered at it.

It wasn't part of daily post, and wasn't addressed, so clearly it was a special delivery. Almost everyone had been gone by the time she'd gathered her supplies and claimed her spot that morning. Only the laziest didn't roll out of bed with youthful vigor in the face of a Hogsmeade weekend. Therefore, very few people had even seen her set up here. Sally Mayfield, Anniston Carmichael, and Heather Chambray, to be precise, and none of them were on the list of forty that could do the bloom spell. Furthermore, while Marlene and Dorcas knew she wasn't planning to go to Hogsmeade, it wasn't something she had talked a lot about. Maybe someone had seen her at the window? If so, that meant it wasn't necessarily a Gryffindor.

Her mind spun. Back to square one, then. Well, square two, perhaps. She did have the bloom spell and the forty people on that list.

She was hesitating. For some reason, the tiny paper-wrapped package intimidated her. What would it be this time? Some _avant garde_ magic to amaze and astonish? A gift she could wear close to her heart for always, wondering who her mysterious love had been? _That_ was the problem, _why couldn't she figure out who this was? _She needed more data. But more data sat in front of her and she was paralyzed.

"You're being ridiculous, Evans. Just open the damn thing," she muttered to herself.

Taking a fortifying breath, Lily picked up the package firmly in both hands, untied the bit of twine holding it all together, and pulled back the paper. And blinked.

A box of sugar quills. And a single chocolate frog.

Dear god. This person knew what her favorite candies were.

888

Monday was Double Potions with Professor Slughorn and the Hufflepuff fifth years. Potter and Black had managed to melt their cauldron again, though how was anyone's guess. They were working on a simple girding potion, a refresher from their fourth year studies, and it didn't have any ingredients that could possibly melt a solid iron cauldron! Nevertheless, Slughorn dismissed the class early to air out the noxious fumes and Lily saw her moment.

She slipped to one side of the evacuating herd and caught the ragged hem of a passing sleeve. Soft golden eyes looked up in surprise.

"Remus, can I borrow you for a moment?" She asked, slightly breathless. She may have forgotten to think about what would happen after this part of the plan.

He smiled and guided them through the dispersing students to a less crowded spot in the hall, "How can I help?"

Lily was still trying to organize her thoughts, but her next line of conversation was stifled by Sirius Black rounding the corner and returning to the Potions classroom door. Seeing his quarry, he hooked an arm around Remus' neck and cast her a friendly grin, "Wotcher, Evans?"

The redhead blinked. Took in the rosy touch suddenly rising up Remus' neck. The way he shifted his books to the other hand so that he could catch Sirius' and hold his arm across his shoulders. The way Sirius un-self-consciously pressed himself to the brunet's back. How Remus' head twitched like he wanted to lay it on a broad shoulder, but still half-remembered they weren't alone. How, even though they were both still facing her, neither boy was even pretending to look at her anymore.

A series of rapid calculations were blazing through her head. She settled her course in her mind, her fists on her hips, eyes on the prize.

"Remus, you have to stop sending me those gifts."

That brought two pairs of eyes around to her, as the boys simultaneously remembered she was there and were utterly baffled by this egregious statement.

"Sirius is your boyfriend," she continued, her calculations being proven correct through the escalating shock and nervousness in their eyes.

"You can't be dating him and sending me sweets and leaving me notes at the same time. It's not fair to any of us."

Remus blinked. Sirius was trying to close his mouth but it didn't seem to be working.

"You are both lovely people and I want you to be happy, but I will not play second fiddle to anyone."

The two boys slowly turned to look at each other, and Lily took this moment to turn on her heel and make her escape. Remus had never been the one sending her gifts, that much was obvious as soon as Sirius had shown up, but perhaps now they'd actually talk to one another. She just hoped she wouldn't have to pull them out of a supply cupboard tonight during rounds. Completely ruin all the work she'd just done.

Still, she sighed, it was back to square two. Again.

888

The next day, coming out of History of Magic, she received a note. It dropped into her armful of school supplies and unrolled itself right in front of her. Eyes wide, she couldn't stop her heart softening at the words.

_Hope the sweets were to your taste! Honeydukes always has the best selection, and it seemed a shame that you had to miss out. You know, I had a dream about you the other night. We were walking through Hogsmeade together, you and I, and you took my hand. It felt so real, like I could feel the lines of your palm against my own. But then a mountain troll stole my left sock and I had to chase him down and sit on him until he gave it back. Dunno what that bit means. But the first bit was nice. _

"Oi! Evans! _Evans_!"

It was like being hit in the face with something wet. Releasing the beautiful and slightly ridiculous picture the note painted, Lily took a deep breath through her nose and tried to calm the bitter stab that voice evoked in her. He was grinning again, flagging her down like Air Traffic Control, both arms flailing wildly. She couldn't handle this right now. She looked directly at him, pulled her books closer, and maintained her pace right past him.

He clutched both hands to his heart, swooned, and collapsed into Sirius' arms, crying out, "Evans, you've cut me to the quick! I shall surely perish this very night!"

The rage boiled up in her.

She couldn't stop herself.

To be honest, she probably could've stopped herself.

But she didn't.

Without breaking stride, she hollered back, "Do us all a favor and aim for this afternoon!"

He howled. She seethed.

It had been five years of this. Lily was sure he saw it as a game, witty banter back and forth, like Sirius played with Professor McGonagall. And most days it was fun, a whetstone upon which she could sharpen her wit. But today, she was tired of it. He went out of his way to put himself in hers, constantly begging for her attention, and any scrap of reply made him triple his efforts to irritate her!

_And really,_ she thought, _I call foul_. It was a yellow flag on the field when he had shown up at the beginning of the year looking terribly fit, his hair finally having reached some semblance of coherence, his eyes constantly sparkling with that joke held just behind his teeth. And when he finally spat it out, often yelled at her retreating back, he would catch up and practically run alongside her, watching her face with that eager puppy look, as if he needed her reaction to reinforce his spectacular ego!

All she wanted was for him to back off. Just a little bit of space. She couldn't breathe when he worked so hard to make her angry and she knew, _she _knew he didn't mean any of it. He spouted gooey love letters and stared googly eyed at her to have a bit of a joke with his friends. They'd only ever had this antagonism between them, he didn't know her, he'd never tried to know her, and she was fucking fed up.

Someone out there knew her favorite candy and made flowers blossom for her and sent her notes about holding her hand. She had no idea who they were. And James Potter had the gall to demand her attention.

This whole secret admirer fiasco had her strung like a piano wire. Merlin, would someone cut her a break?

As if a spiteful djinn had heard her thoughts, a breeze snatched her Transfiguration essay from her tightly held pile and sent it skidding across the cobblestones. Her patience snapped and she gave chase, frantically trying to step on it. Down the breezeway and into the stairwell, where, against all the laws of nature and physics, it began to climb.

Realization poured down Lily's spine and she whipped around. The breezeway was empty. Even Potter's band of merry misfits had evaporated. Slowly, she turned back to the spiraling staircase. Her essay waited for her, hovering mid-air.

"O-okay. I'm coming," she whispered to it, and started to ascend.

Fifteen stories of dizzying spiral staircase later, her essay, which had felt the need to prompt her several times on the journey, abruptly lost its seeming of sentience. It rolled back up, tucked itself into her satchel with a businesslike snap, and was still once more. Lily tried not to let this unsettle her. She'd been part of the Wizarding World since she was eleven years old and enchanted objects were not new. Just ones with personalities.

She shook this off and took the last few steps into the Astronomy Tower. Its high ceiling swept upwards, making visitors _want _to look up. The telescope mounted in the center of the room extended through the ceiling, but in the space before it, in the several feet between her and the open air, lay a blanket, a small basket, and two cups.

The second cup made her heart catch in her throat. A sunset picnic set for two.

Suddenly, and without any indication thereof, she was absolutely convinced that her admirer was in this room. She dared not turn around, the last thing she wanted was to spook them. So, heart thundering in her chest, Lily moved forward. She set down her satchel and her stack of books, settled onto the woolen blanket, and slowly unbuckled her Mary Janes. These too she set aside, leaned against her copy of _Standard Book of Spells Grade Five, _by Miranda Goshawk.

Very carefully, hands laid non-threateningly in her lap, she turned her head slowly towards the only place in the room someone could stand and not be in her line of vision, the staircase she had just entered through.

It was empty.

All in a rush the breath left her body and her head spun. It was empty. There was no one there. This was a massive Odysseus moment and "Nobody" was taunting her. She stood up, remembered she had taken off her shoes, and sat back down. She felt ridiculous. Her face was burning. She'd been so self-involved, she'd actually believed that she had a secret admirer. She'd _wanted_ to have a secret admirer. But obviously this was a joke set up to humiliate her. Someone was sniggering behind a curtain somewhere, she just knew it.

But there were no curtains in the Astronomy Tower. No places for a person to hide. Unless they were under a Disillusionment Charm, but that wasn't in the syllabus until Seventh Year. Except for her fellow Prefects and the Head Boy and Girl, Lily didn't _know_ any Seventh Years. Stuck up bunch, that lot.

She made a split-second decision. Wrenching her wand from her hair, she uttered a precise and powerful, "_Finite Incantatum," _and looked around the room again. Nothing had changed. No one had appeared.

This wasn't a joke.

Her eyes fell once again on that second cup. And she sat down and cried.

888

Deep breaths. She would survive this. So what if she had to walk through the Common Room with a puffy, splotchy face? No one would notice. She would just walk _incredibly quickly_. That was the solution. No one would find that at all odd or out of place. Straight up the stairs and into her dorm room. That was the way of it.

"If you _want _to sleep out here," a snooty voice interrupted her plotting, "no one is stopping you, but be a dear and stop staring at me. Otherwise, darling, you've got to give me the password."

Ah, yes. The Fat Lady never had any trouble intruding on someone else's crisis. Lily straightened her spine, tucked her head low, and said, "Widdershins."

Before she was two steps into the Common Room, her brilliant plan was shot all to hell. A tiny hand tapped her shoulder, one of the first years, and when she turned, the little girl shoved a small bouquet of wildflowers into her arms and fled.

Bright orange Welsh poppies. Wild radish blossoms. A bushel of common vetch. Wild pansy. Fairy flax. They'd had a long summer, but these were probably the last wildflowers of the season.

Her throat closed, a last desperate attempt of her nervous system to kill her before she could be humiliated any further. She pressed her eyes shut, unable to prevent the tears from streaking down her cheeks, and walked otherwise calmly to the girls' staircase. All the eyes in the Common Room could have been on her, and she would not have seen them.

888

That same majestic brown barn owl appeared at her window not twenty minutes later. It entered easily, given that she'd thrown open the panes upon arrival to stick her head out into the cool night air. She had only barely managed to stop crying, but the note tied to the owl's leg meant her reprieve would be short-lived.

She couldn't protect herself from this anymore. No amount of hiding could save her heart now. She unrolled it. Four simple words.

_Why did you cry?_

_Merlin, I'm in love with a nincompoop,_ she thought, exasperated. Gesturing for the owl to stay put, she flipped the note over and turned it longways, then reached to her hair for a writing utensil. The first one was a sugar quill, so she stuck that in her mouth and grabbed another. Inkpot open, anger acutely honed, she dipped and began.

_Whoever you are,_

_You know me so well. Too well. My favorite candies, my favorite flowers, my favorite study spots, my weakness for first years. You made my namesake grow in a despicably unsuitable environment. You helped me with my homework when I'd fallen asleep, and you made sure I was warm. You're thoughtful, and romantic. And a coward. You set up that beautiful picnic for both of us, and you didn't show up. You _chose _not to show up. I thought it was all a prank. A horrible prank to make me feel like someone could like me and then those wildflowers? How long did you spend looking for them, I know they don't grow on the castle grounds. Did you go into the Forbidden Forest, or out past the Whomping Willow just to pick me a bouquet of wildflowers? Are you an idiot? You can't be an idiot, you made a stargazer lily grow out of a goblet of pumpkin juice! You know everything about me and I know _nothing_ about you. How dare you make me feel like this and then just not show up?_

_Please, stop._

_Lily_

She didn't even notice the teardrops smearing her words. She rolled up the parchment, tied it back to the owl's leg, and sent it on, regret only hitting her once it was finished.

She sat back down on her bed, fingers to her brow to ease the oncoming headache. When had her life become so dramatic? She didn't like it. She was glad that none of her dormmates were back yet, if only for the extra moment to pull herself together. She was walking to the en suite bathroom when she heard the tapping again.

Expecting an owl, she was rightfully startled when she saw James Fleamont Potter hovering outside her window on his broom. He wasn't grinning.

She blinked, then snapped, "What do you want?"

His head ducked, and he ruffled his already messy hair. Usually when he did this it looked like preening. Today, it looked like chagrin. "I chickened out," he said. "I chickened out. I was supposed to be there, and we could eat apples dipped in caramel and look up at the stars together. But I got nervous. You make me nervous. And when I get nervous, I get flustered, and then I just start talking and Remus always has to tell me whatever stupid thing I said to you because I never remember, I just get so flustered." His dark brown eyes shot up to hers, realizing that he was repeating himself. His embarrassment turned to distress. "Please don't cry, I don't ever want you to cry."

Lily Evan's brain usually operated like twenty thousand typists at individual desks working on individual assignments with equal ease and proficiency. Now it operated like a single, solitary house elf jumping up and down on a hand crank built for someone six times its size.

She was trying to force her understanding of her sweet, romantic secret admirer into her understanding of James Potter, her sparring partner in a five-year-long battle of wits. It was rather like trying to fit an elephant into a thimble. "But... but you've... and I... but you're not on the list!" Lily finally blurted out, feeling like the neat weft of her reality was unravelling on the loom.

James' face folded in on itself, "What list?" He'd never had any trouble not knowing things. She envied him for that.

"The list! The list of people who could've managed the lily bloom spell!" The redhead spat out. "The last time you asked a question in Herbology, it was second year! You'd been bitten by that venomous tentacula sprout and you held up your hand and said, _"Is this bad?"!"_

If Lily had ever possessed any cool, it was long gone by now.

James' smile was reforming. "You remember that?" Lily's eyes narrowed to slits and the boy rushed on, "No, no, Pete dared me to so I had to do it! And besides, it was just a little sprout, they weren't lethal at that stage of development! It barely even knocked me out!"

"You were unconscious for _two days!"_

"... No, I wasn't."

Fantasies about desiccating his whole person and leaving the shriveled husk in the common room swam in her mind. Instead, she pinned him in place with her acid glare. "Are you claiming you _do _have the ability to make a lily grow?"

"Well, yeah." He shrugged and ruffled a hand through his hair again, balancing effortlessly on his broom. He didn't seem to be aware that he was hovering outside a window several hundred feet off the ground. "We found the bulb out behind the greenhouses, and I wanted to play with functionally resizing living organisms cause, er... but instead I stumbled on a way to rapidly increase the speed of growth and bulbs are nice to work with because they'll just grow and die and grow again and you don't have to find a new one. Erm, so, when I finally got the trick of it, and Remus mentioned that it was a lily, cause I'm absolute shit at identifying flowers, I just thought... well, I thought you might... like it?"

Lily was trying to make sense of this dithering confession. She was stuck on a bit from the beginning.

"Why," she asked slowly, "did you want to resize living organisms?"

The already-shifty boy's eyes went wide, his dark skin taking a greenish hue, and he gulped, preemptively flinching back from her reaction to whatever he was about to say. "I wanted... a tiny pet deer? To keep in my pocket?"

Lily honestly didn't know how to respond to that.

Aloud, she said, "I honestly don't know how to respond to that." Might as well get all her cards on the table too. Her eyes narrowed again and she resumed her interrogation.

"The candy?"

"I thought the note summed that up nice enough."

"My transfiguration notes?"

"Well, I hadn't read that one before, and you seemed to think it was important."

A thought occurred to Lily and her suspicions rose again, "Did you break the leg on the chair that day? So that I would fall and you could catch me?"

The boy seemed honestly offended by that. "Of course not! Though, now that you mention it, it would have been the first time I made you fall for me." He smirked at his own pun, eyebrows dancing the familiar _congratulate-me-I'm-a-genius _dance.

Looking to the ceiling as if it bestowed patience, Lily missed the transition into sudden, hesitant honesty. "But... I did hide all the ladders," James confessed. Acid green eyes fixed on him and he stumbled blindly ahead, "I didn't... I mean... I'm _tall _now, okay? I wanted to, maybe, get a book down off a high shelf for you or something! Though the way you managed it was really quite impressive, with the chair and the balancing and all that. You really must teach me how to do that! Sirius and I have been trying in the dorms but we kept falling over and Remus said we were too loud. So now we just practice with cushioning charms and silencing spells."

Lily's smile was threatening to crack her stern facade. He thought she was impressive. This stupid, brilliant, overly determined nervous wreck of a boy thought _she _was impressive. But she still had one burning question, and she couldn't not ask it. Schooling her features, she quirked an eyebrow and redirected him, "The picnic?"

Thrown off track, he twitched a little and fell silent. Lily dropped her eyes, sure this was where it would all fall to pieces, but then he said, "I was there."

Her head whipped back up. "What?!"

"Well, I was there for the first minute or so, but then you sat down and you were taking off your shoes and you looked... so... I dunno but it was just suddenly all_there_ and _real_ and I panicked and jumped out the window."

"You jumped out the _window?"_

"Well, I had my broom with me!"

"But... but..." Her brain was piecing this new information together. "But I was facing the window. The only place anyone could have been was the stairwell! How did I not see you?"

His eyes glued themselves to the floor. "Um. I was... invisible."

She pressed her fingers into her temples and sighed. "James..."

His head snapped up. "You've never called me that before." His eyes held a light that looked startlingly akin to hope.

"Yes, I have," she balked.

"No, you haven't," he pounced, unused to being right in any situation involving Lily Evans. "You do your level best to avoid calling me anything at all, but when you have to, you call me Potter. Or 'that one'. Once it was 'hopeless imbecile', but I don't think I was supposed to hear that."

"_James." _Lily said again, unwilling to cede the point and choosing instead to change the subject. "Why didn't you just _tell me?"_

"Tell you what?"

She slammed her head into her cupped palms, then, unsatisfied, raked her fingers into her hair, an unconscious attempt to sooth her rising frustration.

"Lily," his voice was suddenly deep and smooth, the fastest part of the river. "I've been telling you for years. You never believed me." He shrugged again, "Why would you believe me now?"

She met his eyes then, lips parting to respond, but his brown eyes held a bittersweet resignation she'd never seen there before, and she was thrown back in time.

How often had his sallies caught her off guard and pulled a laugh out of her? How many times had she been too deep in a study binge and a jibe from him brought her back to the world, only to realize that it was well past time for bed? Why did she always sneak a smile after besting him in a battle of wordplay? Why did she never lose any of their skirmishes?

"I'm sorry, I think I'm seeing double," she murmured nonsensically. Her knees started to buckle. When had the ocean moved into her dormitory?

"Hey, hey, hey, are you okay?" James sounded like he was very far away, even as he navigated his broomstick into the dorm room and dropped to the ground. "Look at me."

He was half a breath away from her, long-fingered hands reaching to cup her face, when the stone of the floor liquified, absorbed his feet, and slid him bodily out of the room and down all five flights of stairs.

His throaty caterwauling getting further and further away made Lily throw her head back and cackle, even as all the pieces snapped into place. This was her life now.

If she let James Potter into her world, it would be exactly as it was before, constantly engaged in verbal combat and never a moment's peace. But maybe, all that would feel different, knowing that the boy who chased her down the hallway until she gave him some sort of reply was also the boy who owled her a box of her favorite sweets when he knew she wouldn't get any on her own. The boy who always had an opener, which she now suspected were specifically concocted for her to close. The boy who covered her with her robes to make sure she was warm enough, and who left the safety of his broomstick when it looked like she might faint. That last one was probably only because he'd forgotten the rules about boys in the girls' dormitory, but she'd give him the benefit of the doubt. Just this once.

She was still laughing when, failing to re-climb the stairs and having left his broom aloft, he resorted to yelling from below. "Evans! I can hear you laughing! Get down here, I'm not done with you!"

By now the stairs had reformed out of the slide, stone molding itself like liquid and making her love Hogwarts all the more. Lily picked up the broomstick and, barefoot and puffy-eyed, made her way down to the Common Room.

"You just want this back," she taunted at the last turn of the staircase. She tossed the broomstick back and forth between her hands, liking the weight of it. Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, and Peter Pettigrew lounged on the couch in front of the fire, leading the crowd by example in arduously pretending they weren't hanging on every word. And there _was _a crowd. Ten or so second years were huddled in the far corner playing Exploding Snap, a handful of fourth years were taking up the tables with textbooks and hastily written assignments.

Marlene and Dorcas chose that exact moment to come through the portrait entrance looking like they'd just stumbled out of a supply closet. In all likelihood, they had. So they got to bear witness to James Fleamont Potter saying, "You can bet I want a bit more than that," and Lily Evans falling, quite happily, into his arms.

Marlene nearly tripped over herself to untangle her limbs from Dorcas, with every intention of separating the two lovebirds with lethal force, if necessary. In a stunning show of speed and agility, Remus Lupin abandoned his book (it was, indeed, _The Complete Works of William Shakespeare_), leapt over the back of the couch, and planted himself between her and her quarry.

"It's okay, Marls. I think we're all on the same page now," Sirius called from the sofa. Remus smiled at the dumbfounded blonde until she relaxed, and then he slipped both hands into his pockets, sallying back to his place beside Sirius as if nothing had happened at all. Sirius, taking full advantage of this momentary change in position, draped his legs over Remus' thighs and leaned in to press his face close enough to smell the other boy's old-paper scent. Remus, sensing the request therein, stole a soft kiss from his best friend, all things right with his world.

On his other side, Peter leaned in to Remus' ear, unaware that he was definitely interrupting something. "I - I thought she hated him?" he asked, chewing on a thumbnail.

Remus smirked and glanced over at the new couple, so entangled in each other they were almost dancing. "Nah, she didn't."

Dorcas slipped both arms around Marlene's waist, and dropped her chin onto her girlfriend's shoulder. "Think they'll be okay now?" she asked, leaning her forehead to Marlene's throat, mostly out of habit.

Marlene's brow furrowed, trying to make sense of the cold that was clicking through her vertebrae.

"I don't know, babe. I've got a bad feeling about this."

888


End file.
